Everything we think, do and refrain from doing is determined by our brain. From religion to sexuality, it shapes our potential, our desires and our characters. Taking us through every stage in our lives, from the womb to falling in love to old age, Dick Swaab shows that we don't just have brains: we are our brains.
Maybe we are our body then. — EugeneW
”Everything we think, do and refrain from doing is determined by our brain.” — EugeneW
Dick Swaab shows that we don't just have brains: we are our brains.
This is nonsense, in the sense that it makes no sense. — EugeneW
Yet you use the term to describe what the brain emits or produces. It's not my made-up idea. It's yours that I'm trying to understand based on what you have said and the terms you are using.Consciousness is the brain operating to allow for wakefulness and awareness. There is no "where." It's a made up idea. There is just the brain and its functions. Consciousness is itself a made-up term used to describe something people had no clue about before the past few decades. — Garrett Travers
The brain does not enable sight on it's own. It needs eyes to be able to do that. Eyes are not the brain, but are connected to the brain.Then consciousness isn't emitted by the brain, but is the brain operating in certain ways. You aren't being consistent.
— Harry Hindu
There is no distinction between the two, Harry. The brain emits, generates, or otherwise enables consciousness, just as it does sight, through its operations. Individual networks of the brain are responsible for certain functions, that when operating in tandem with others, produce the awareness that you use the term "consciousness" to describe. — Garrett Travers
When dismissing the hard problem, I'm not sure Apo has grasped what it is. I say this tentatively, because I find it incredible. I feel bad saying this, because it is exclusionary. It's almost disqualifying people from the conversation, which feels bad. — bert1
A textbook example of Dunning-Kruger in action. The less folk know about brain function, the more they feel confident the Hard Problem is a slam dunk. — apokrisis
I find it amazing that people cannot see that the so-called "Hard Problem" only arises when a third person account (science) is expected to be able somehow to capture the qualitative reality that is first person experience. It's simply a category error; a conflation of different arenas of sense. — Janus
I find it amazing that people cannot see that the so-called "Hard Problem" only arises when a third person account (science) is expected to be able somehow to capture the qualitative reality that is first person experience. It's simply a category error; a conflation of different arenas of sense. — Janus
It's only interesting if you try to predict how subjectivity and objectivity will be reshuffled with science of the future, which we don't really have to model in any precision way. — Enrique
You have to believe in an all-seeing God to think that talk about a third person point of view. Do you think such a view exists in any real sense? If you do, then you are simply building dualism and transcendence into your ontology. It is an input rather than an output of your confident arguments. — apokrisis
I'm not sure what you have in mind here: are you suggesting that experience may somehow cease to be qualitative in the future, or that science may somehow be able to quantify the qualitative? — Janus
In Descartes’ day the Hard Problem concerned the relation between the Divine realm and the mechanistic realm of physical nature. Many dismissed the problem by arguing that it was a category error, a conflation of different areas of sense. Fortunately , those who managed to dissolve the problem rather
than reify it won out. — Joshs
Third person vs first person is just publicly available vs not publicly available. — Janus
Yes, subjectivity will change as objective reality evolves with scientific advance, but a domain of practical immediacy remains, and subjectivity as an aspect of what makes us human should be preserved for all individuals on principle, at least that's my opinion. The hard problem placed in pragmatic terminology is simply how to incorporate these new objectivities into culture, really not so enigmatic in its essentials. — Enrique
Could we say instead that the public realm is the intersubjective arena? Rather than there being the same object viewed by all , there would be a reciprocal coordination among points of view. Each directly sees
only their own perspective on an object but indirectly incorporates the others’ perspectives. The third-personal ‘same object for’ all is never actuallly seen by anybody but exists as a convenient idealization , the result of consensus. — Joshs
I've said plenty. It's up to you to make a case worth considering. — apokrisis
No one will say it is purple with pink polka dots. No one will say the bulldog in front of us is a Dachsund, or the Mack truck is Lamborghini or the cat is a horse and so on. — Janus
It is a model-dependent assumption that your pain is "in here" and the prickly rose bush is "out there".
How do you check the truth of this? How do you solve the Kantian riddle and so secure the foundations of your epistemology, rather than just claim it is plain obvious commonsense? — apokrisis
Science examines the examinable, measures the measurable, and this very much relies on that basic public availability. By contrast, phenomenology attempts to describe how we experience; and the only agreement possible in that consists in the fact that we all experience, and can reflect on the general character of that experience; so we have here two different arenas of sense-making; that is all I've been saying. — Janus
You just damn science because ... naive realism? — apokrisis
Science examines the examinable, measures the measurable, and this very much relies on that basic public availability. By contrast, phenomenology attempts to describe how we experience; and the only agreement possible in that consists in the fact that we all experience, and can reflect on the general character of that experience; so we have here two different arenas of sense-making; that is all I've been saying. — Janus
The only issue for you is whether these descriptions are of private stuff or public stuff.
Do you really have nothing to say at all about epistemological fundamentals? You just damn science because ... naive realism? — apokrisis
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